Good Better Best
by KnightedRogue
Summary: The trip back from Tatooine leads to an important revelation. Three little words Han might have forgotten to say.


Han jerked awake, covered in sweat and with a sharp ache behind his eyes. He closed them quickly, trying to beat back the lancing pain. He was _hot._ He was nauseated. His ribs felt awful on his left side. And he was having trouble remembering where he was, what had happened, and why he felt the way he felt.

 _Shut the hell up,_ he ordered himself, trying to calm the velocity of his questions. Panic would do him absolutely no good. He was obviously in bad shape. He needed to know how much trouble he was in. Assess the situation. Plan his escape, if necessary.

First things first. _Where am I?_

He tried to open his eyelids again. Immediately, sharp cracks of pain exploded behind his eyes, bringing with them another heaving round of nausea. Screwing his eyes tight, he breathed through the worst of whatever the hell his stomach was currently doing. Muscle spasms wracked his upper body, followed by a sudden chill, and he struggled to keep a grip on consciousness.

Slowly— _god, so slowly_ —the feeling passed and the pain behind his eyes dulled to a low ache. Deep breaths, he reminded himself. In and out. It was easy enough: his lungs were working okay. That was good news, at least. A punctured lung or two wasn't exactly helpful if he needed a quick escape.

He tried to take stock of his surroundings without risking his eyes again. He was lying down on his right side, knees bent and head slightly elevated. He pressed his face into the fabric against his cheek: synthetic fiber, soft, smelled familiar.

A pillow. _His_ pillow.

His hand shot out in front of his body, felt the worn fabric of his topsheet against his fingertips. His bunk aboard the _Falcon._ He breathed a sigh of relief: at the very least he could navigate his cabin with his eyes closed, could get some water, find Chewie. If he was in danger, he had a better chance of handling the situation here than anywhere else in the galaxy. Whatever had happened, he was home. It sure as hell beat the other possibilities.

Next. _What's wrong with me?_

That was a tougher question to answer. He decided to start from the ground up, as it were: wiggling his toes, testing his knees, hips, shoulders. He winced at the pain in his side— _shit,_ it felt like he'd been kicked in the ribs—and then hissed when he tried to arch his back. A line of thick, hot pain arced through every nerve down his spine. It felt like the skin on his torso was pulled too tight, like he'd been flayed or whipped or—

"Han?" he heard from behind him. "Are you awake?"

He stiffened. Someone was here with him, in his cabin, uninvited. Where was his blaster? Where was Chewie? What the hell could he do, seeing fuck-all and feeling like his skin was about to split apart at the seams?

His stomach rolled in sudden, angry heaves. Without warning, his body contracted against a rising wave of nausea, threatening to pull him under. He was in no condition to vomit: not with the way his ribs ached with every movement. The combination would knock him out entirely. He struggled to hold still, tried to quell the heaving in his stomach.

He heard his name again but couldn't focus on recognizing the voice. His body rebelled against whatever had happened to him: every terrible instinct it had firing at the exact same time. He shivered and sweated and swallowed against a groan. He wrapped his arms tightly around his stomach and tried not to move.

A hand on his shoulder, on his forehead. He flinched, then cursed. _Calm the hell down,_ he ordered himself. _Nobody's killed you yet._

More breaths. The hand slipped across his cheek, along his jaw, beneath his ear, to the back of his neck. It felt cool and the fingers were soft, stroking from hairline to shoulder and back again. The fight left him with the caress, dissipating as quickly as it had come. The hand knew him, knew the lines of his fear and the strain seized deep under his muscles. Knew how he liked to be touched. How he—how _she–_

 _Leia,_ he thought with sudden, crystal clarity.

The name sliced through the fog of his hibernation sickness like a blade through air. He was on his bunk because Chewie had carried him in here after they'd jumped from Tatooine. His boots were off and he wore a softer set of sleep pants. He was also shirtless: a small mercy considering the blistering pain from the skin of his torso. The people who'd saved him, who'd risked their necks for him, had undressed him, run a scan on him, redressed him and ordered him to sleep until they rendezvoused with the Alliance.

He was safe. They'd rescued him. And now he was home.

"Leia?" he asked, voice caked with disuse and easing pain. "That you?"

"That's right, Flyboy."

Leia's hand continued its gentle caress, luring him back to sleep. He resisted, remembering the nausea, pain and confusion of the past few moments. Maybe the sleep had done him some good—his stomach was already calming down—but he was in no rush to experience his abrupt awakening again. If the hibernation sickness hit him hardest when he woke up, he sure as hell would try to avoid experiencing it again at all cost.

He groaned, stretched his legs and kept his torso still. Tried to, at least. "How long have I been out?"

The fingers moved down his shoulder to wrap around his wrist. _Taking my pulse,_ he thought. Trust Leia to keep track of his vitals at a time like this. If the movement wouldn't have caused him searing pain, he would've rolled his eyes.

"Fourteen hours," she said. She slid her fingers down to thread them with his. "How do you feel?"

"Awful," he said. "Why am I still shivering?"

He could feel her sidle closer to his back, press a kiss against his shoulder blade. "Homeostatic re-regulation," she murmured against his skin, kissed him again. "You've been frozen for six months. Your body's trying to find its equilibrium."

"Apparently it had fourteen hours to do all that," he mumbled against the pillow. "Hurry it up."

She laughed quietly against his skin. "Give it time."

He took another deep breath, then brought her hand to his lips in a soft kiss. Praying he wouldn't regret it, he moved her hand away and rolled onto his back. The burns ached; they were from the scan grid, he remembered, when they'd flipped him after his chest had gotten too bruised. On Cloud City. As Vader and Lando had watched.

He licked his lips and avoided that thought.

He tried to open his eyes again. This time the pain ebbed a little. He blinked and opened them again, and again, and again, testing them until the pain migrated from behind his eyes to his temples. It hurt but it was now more like a headache than an untreated head trauma. Maybe getting out of the harsh light of the twin suns had helped. Maybe the sleep had helped. Maybe _time_ had helped.

 _Better,_ he thought, blinking up at the ceiling of his cabin. His vision was still blurry, watery shapes with constantly-shifting edges, but it _was_ improving. He could tell the cabin lights were at the barest possible setting, just a dull blue glow near the hatch. He couldn't see the individual seams of the hull plating, but he could distinguish where the bulkhead met the ceiling, could discern the outline of the 'fresher hatch.

He turned his head to look at the woman on his left.

He could see… some of her. Leia's hair was loosely braided down one side of her head. He could see big, dark spots where he knew her eyes were supposed to be. He couldn't tell what she was wearing or what her expression was, but he could see that she was lying on her side, facing him, her elbow digging into his pillow and her head resting on her fist.

" _Hey_ ," he said, reaching out a hand and stroking her cheek with his thumb.

She closed her eyes and inched closer to him. Han focused on determining why the dark of her eyes looked so huge. He hadn't looked too carefully at her on the skiff, and once he _had,_ he'd been preoccupied with getting her out of that goddamn disgusting outfit she'd been forced to wear. Now, without all that light, it was hard for him to pick up specifics. And he suddenly needed specifics.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," he said, trying a grin. He didn't know what kind of mood she was in. He couldn't read her facial expressions for clues and, even if he _could,_ sometimes she stumped him. The woman had had him convinced that she hated him on Hoth, and that had been when his eyes had _worked._ Gods only knew what she was thinking now.

"Are they better?" she asked, referring to his eyes. "The medic I consulted said it might take a day or two."

"A real medic or a droid?"

He couldn't tell for sure, but he suspected she rolled her eyes at him. "What difference does it make?"

"A Two-One-Bee is worse."

She shook her head. "Then I talked to a real medic."

"Huh," he said. He dropped his hand back from her face to rest against his stomach. "A day or two? Really?"

"Mm-hmm. You'll be better in no time."

He blew out his breath and closed his eyes. "Good."

That was a relief. By his best estimate, Leia had freed him from the carbonite about a standard day ago. The first two or three hours with Chewie in Jabba's dungeon had been a mess of vomit, fever and confusion. By the time they'd been hauled back up to the throne room, Chewie had filled him in on the basics of the situation: the plan, the back-up plan, the back-up plan to the back-up plan. He'd started to feel the burns on his chest and back but the action near the sarlacc pit had erased it as he'd focused on the matter at hand. Namely: staying alive.

Now the knowledge that his recovery was imminent could let him relax.

The atmosphere of the cabin turned softer, warmer. He opened his eyes, looked back at Leia. She was quiet and still, letting him rest. He appreciated the thought but he didn't want to sleep. He wanted to know why her eyes were too big, why he'd felt her ribs when she'd launched herself into his arms aboard the skiff.

"Six months," he began for her.

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Six months," she repeated.

"Long time to be hunting for a hunk of metal," he said. "You okay?"

She was quiet, in effect answering his question without saying a word.

Leia's pain had always humbled him, always made him feel like he was being thrust straight into the heart of something much larger than himself. He wasn't in the habit of casually dismissing the destruction of an entire planet. Even at their most contentious, he could never turn a blind eye to Leia's capacity to feel loss. He could rail against her stubbornness, her idealism, her weird sense of egalitarianism for all except him, but there was a part of him completely paralyzed by the enormity of her loss.

Adding to that loss was one of the worst things he'd ever done. It made him feel sick.

When she next spoke, her voice was low. "I'm better now that I have you back."

 _Sweetheart,_ he thought, watching her drop her chin, avoid his eyes. Sudden discomfort settled over them, around the bunk, like a low cloud. Han wasn't sure what to say, what he _should_ say, in the face of all that she'd done to find him. Chewie had told him about the flee from Bespin, about Leia's grief, her righteous stand against High Command as they denied her resources for his rescue. He'd told him that Leia had _left the Alliance without their blessing_ to join the rescue on Tatooine. That she'd been steadfast in her commitment and dogged in her determination to save him.

Han didn't have experience with that kind of love. Never in his life had someone wanted him enough to keep him around, much less fight her hardest to get him back. He knew he was important to her, that she loved him, but the sheer magnitude of her sacrifice for him put him in a uniquely vulnerable place.

"Listen," he said, awkward but trying. "I'm sorry. For Bespin. For taking us there."

Her eyes met his again. "There wasn't another choice."

"There's always a choice," he said, voice low.

He hadn't meant to say that out loud, but the truth itched at him. He didn't honestly know that there _had_ been a choice. His personal philosophy hinged on his ability to have that choice, and he wasn't comfortable accepting that fate or the Force had predestined his six-month carbonite internment. He couldn't accept such a drastic reversal. Not now.

" _Han_."

Unthinking, he waved a hand in the air, dismissive of her warm, compassionate tone. But the movement tugged on the skin of his torso and the line of fire ran down his chest and back like a trail of oil alight on a bed of tinder.

" _Hell,"_ he muttered. "Stop makin' me move."

He hadn't meant it as a joke—seriously, had his skin _shrunk_?—but Leia's unexpected laugh lightened the mood, and he was instantly thrown back into the joy of the flight to Bespin. That laugh, the thrill of _making_ her laugh…. One of the best parts about their decision to take their relationship into his bunk had been discovering that laugh. He didn't remember anything about his time in the blasted carbonite, but he still felt like he'd missed that sound over the past six months.

"Sorry," she mumbled. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against the curve of his shoulder. "I have some bacta patches in my pack. Do you want me to—?"

"Don't even think about leaving this bunk," he warned.

"You're in pain," she said, shifting to move away from him, her sense of duty suddenly engaged.

He grabbed her elbow just before she moved out of reach, pulled her back down to the bunk. "No, I'm right where I want to be. Don't go."

His movement had burned a little, but Leia was now closer to him, her nose just centims away from his. She was close enough that he could tell why her eyes had looked so large to him before: his eyesight hadn't allowed him to differentiate between the dark of her eyes and the shadows beneath them. _She hasn't been sleeping,_ he thought. _What have you been doing to yourself, Leia?_

He kissed her, lips brushing hers as she tilted her head up and closed her eyes. Slowly, he rolled onto his side to get closer to her, to wrap his arm around her waist, to feel her pressed against him. The burn simmered beneath his skin, but the cool relief in holding Leia overrode the pain.

He kept the kiss light, more an expression of closeness than sexual need. Kissing Leia had always had a ramping-up effect on him; something about the long build-up to their relationship had made his brain short-circuit once his lips met hers. And once they'd moved into a more physical stage of their relationship, he hadn't needed to hide how she affected him. She knew he wanted her, knew that she drove him crazy.

His two modes of operation the past few years had been _pissed at Leia_ and _wanting Leia._ It had come as no real surprise to him when he had discovered that those modes were two sides of the same coin. His anger at her seemingly easy dismissal of him was born out of that want. He couldn't understand what had made her act like the connection wasn't there. _Wanting Leia_ was simply a law in Han Solo's universe. It was, it always had been, and it always would be.

But _this_ wasn't _that._ Han had no intention of deepening this kiss and he had no end-game. He just wanted to be close to her, wanted to undo her braid and push his hand into her hair. He wanted the warmth of her arms around him, wanted to breathe her in, feel the smoothness of her skin. The sweet comfort of being in bed with a woman without feeling the need to prove himself to her, without the pressure to be brave or brilliant, humbled him in unanticipated ways.

Leia made him feel safe.

Her hand swept up his arm and his neck until it held the back of his head. Han's heart squeezed in his chest. _Someone who loves you,_ she'd said. Twice, in fact. Two declarations, bracketing six months of nothingness. To Han, it felt like she'd simply repeated it back-to-back, minutes apart.

But the dark shadows beneath her eyes gave testament to another reality entirely. One where she'd suffered on his behalf. Alone.

He pulled away from her lips, looking at her closed eyes. "Leia," he said.

Her eyes opened slowly.

There was a proper way to do this, he knew. Honestly, he probably should have just told her on the carbon-freeze platform when she'd said it. It had been true then, had been true for awhile. But what Leia had needed at that moment was her fight. And if he was going down, he sure as hell was going to do it making sure his last moments didn't tear her up further than they already were. He couldn't offer her an escape from the nightmare, but he could challenge her to fight for him.

He wasn't a man of words; he was a man of action.

But she'd sacrificed _everything_ for him, been completely honest with him about where she stood on this. And though he suspected she didn't need to hear him say it—clearly, she wasn't expecting him to say anything of the kind—he might damn well _need_ to say it. _It turns out you're a sap, Pal,_ he thought. _Go figure._

Her eyes were all over his face, looking worried. He could tell she was about to reach for his wrist again to check his pulse, and he realized he had to start speaking or she'd go into full medic mode.

Hell, there was no right way to say this. So he'd do it his way.

"Back on Bespin," he said, then cleared his throat, "and again at Jabba's, you said something important."

Her face was suddenly expressionless, the worry in her eyes dulled. "I did," she affirmed, voice low and even.

If he lived a thousand years he would never understand the way Leia could so easily say everything and nothing at the exact same time. _I did_ sounded like both defense and offense simultaneously. _Yes, I damn well did, Flyboy,_ and also: _are you sure that means what you think it means, Captain Solo?_

"Did you mean it?" he asked.

A long pause, not awkward but intense. It was like a living thing, charged with energy and sparking with potential. Her eyes had stopped their mad dash over his face and had narrowed into one angry beam.

"Are you serious?" she finally said.

"I'm just making sure we're on the same page—"

But her voice outstripped his. "You don't _really_ think I'd lie about something like that, do you?" she asked. "Twice?"

Her head leaned away from his, off the pillow, and she shifted onto her elbow again. He was fucked, plain and simple: her voice told him so without any shred of doubt.

 _You're an idiot,_ he told himself.

"Don't get all riled up," he said instead. On instinct. He couldn't help it. "I'm _trying_ to have an adult conversation here."

"By asking me if I lied to you when I told you I loved you?"

Well… yeah. But that wasn't what he'd _meant_ to do. He supposed his intention had been more to offer her a way out. Give her the freedom to say that emotions run high in stressful situations, that people say and do things they don't mean when it looks like the worst-case scenario. He was trying to be valiant and give her the choice. Funny how he'd only managed to piss her off.

"Six months is a long time," he said. "Things change."

"And that's why I nearly set off a thermal detonator in Jabba's throne room? Because things change?"

His heartbeat tripped on itself. "You _what?_ "

She didn't bat an eye. "And why I ripped up my hands strangling a massive Hutt with a chain? Because things change?"

He opened his mouth to reply but then closed it, thinking that Leia was working up to something important. He might not be good with words, but he understood the fine line that they had both walked before they'd started the trip to Bespin. If his two modes were _pissed at Leia_ and _wanting Leia,_ hers were nearly the same. Clearing up that misunderstanding had led to a much more harmonious relationship between them than he'd ever thought possible. Jumping to the defense when she was clearly upset wasn't going to do either of them any good.

She took a deep breath, turned her head as if she was going to get up out of the bunk. He swallowed but held firm in his determination to see this out, to give her the time to say what she needed to say. He hadn't exactly done a great job of telling her what he wanted to tell her, either. And if she got up now he would give her space and start over, start _better,_ when she came back.

To his surprise, though, Leia blew out her breath and settled down facing him. She wasn't on his pillow any longer but she was still close enough that he could reach out and run a hand down the long snake of her braid.

Quiet settled around them again, the hum of the hyperdrive a calming presence in the cabin. He marvelled at the change in atmosphere, how he and Leia could defuse a potentially perilous situation together without a screaming match. When had that happened? When had they figured out how to coexist without a constant battle of wills? He had no idea.

Leia's eyes settled on his again, deep and steady. "Nothing has changed for me, Han."

He wanted to kiss her. That was his first instinct, the driving force of decades of isolationism. Action first, words later. He'd find a good time, some quiet moment when they were together and not recovering from a pretty insane series of events. When he wasn't fighting down chills and nausea at every turn.

But that wasn't fair. She'd said it in front of the goddamned Dark Lord of the Sith. He could say it in the safe confines of his cabin.

"I love you," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't say it before."

Leia was still, watching him. Her eyes had the laser-focus of before, trained on his face like she was boring holes into his head, mining for truth. _How do you not already know this?_ he wondered. _How is this a revelation?_

Of course he loved her. He hadn't stuck around Alliance bases, swamps and jungles and tundras, for the scenery. He hadn't put himself in the line of fire for her because he believed in the cause, though his new self-reflection might move him into that direction sooner rather than later. He'd done a lot to show her that he was helplessly in awe of her at every turn, completely blown away by her ferocity, her intelligence, her strength.

He was a man of action. He'd _acted._

And if he'd said something to her before this point, if he'd laid it all bare for her to mine, she probably wouldn't have believed it. He could imagine that she'd rationalize her own hypocrisy by assuming it was a ruse to sleep with her, that a good lay would justify him saying _anything_ to a woman. Never mind that he would never do that; never mind that he'd never had to work that hard for companionship or sex.

Oh, hell. He was defensive about that. _Cool it,_ he ordered himself. _Don't ruin this for her._

He took a deep breath, thinking it'd been a few seconds and she hadn't reacted at all. Should he repeat it? Was she waiting to hear him say it twice? Keeping score? That was ridiculous: grown people with real relationships don't do that.

Finally she moved. With a steady hand, she swiped at the scar on his chin and smiled brilliantly.

"It took you long enough," she said, and kissed him around her smile, her hand coming up to the side of his face.

He reached around her, ignoring the pull on his bruises, to grab at her waist and drag her closer to him. Lying on his side, body flush with hers, Han swept his hand under a men's shirt and against the smooth skin of her back, realizing for the first time that she was wearing _his_ clothes and that he couldn't see her. _Rotten luck,_ he thought, but dismissed it as soon as he realized what the gesture meant. Not only was she not denying their relationship, she was actively embracing it. Wearing his shirt, lying in his bunk with him, taking care of him in his pathetic state.

 _What in the stars did you do so right, buddy, to deserve this?_ He smiled against her lips, pulled her closer, happily wrapped up in the woman he loved. There was still a lot to sort out, and he still felt like hell. But this? Now? With her?

That was worth it.

* * *

 _Author's Note: this story was written for Organanation, my 2017 Summer Secret Santa giftee! Thank you for your kindness, friendship and support, my friend!_

"


End file.
